Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 Fantastic Book for Travelers September 3, 2008
I was traveling to Germany with my husband and a friend, and wanted to know enough of the language to get around, and I achieved it with this book. I was working long hours right before the trip, and had only studied for a couple of weeks, and really for about 10 minutes a day. On the plane ride over, I put in a few hours of intense studying.
We had heard that "everyone will speak German" - which was not the case. I was able to negotiate hotel rooms, food in restaurants, and even tickets to a concert in Cologne, which was tricky because the ticket sales booth wanted to send me to the concert hall to buy the tickets, and vice-versa.
I was able to say in broken German, "Woman says no. Woman says we must buy tickets here." And the man sold us the tickets, and the concert was lovely. If I hadn't been able to resolve that issue, we would have just given up, I'm sure.
My German was far from perfect, but I could make myself understood. My husband teased me about how intense I was when I was speaking, because I was concentrating so hard. Once, we arrived in a small town - we had rented a car - way past the lunch hour and we were starving. I laugh to think about it. We walked into a restaurant that was empty except for two women chatting. I intoned in German, "We are hungry. We must eat." They looked startled, perhaps even frightened - the intensity, again - but jumped up and got us menus. The menus would have been indecipherable except for the book's menu with translations, which you can pull out to take with you. We had a wonderful lunch, and I was able to thank the ladies.
These 10 minute a day books are well organized. First, they teach you pronunciation, so that you can properly say any word you encounter. Then, you learn phrases that you'll really USE while traveling. (None of this "Edith is at the pool" nonsense, sentences you'll never use that are so prevalent in traditional language books. That one was actually in a French textbook. However, it pales to the Polish textbook that taught me how to say, "Why does your new cow look so sad?" Oh, yeah, I'm really going to be using that sentence soon.)
I really love the stickers that you place around the room on objects so that you can learn the name for things, making the visual connection.
I love the "free words" - words that are the same in English - that are at the bottom of each page.
The flash cards are helpful too.
This isn't a grammar book. You can learn enough of the language to travel, and if you really want to know the nuts and bolts, then when you return, you can take a hard-core class, and learn how to say "We're watching television, but we don't know why." - (another gem from my Polish book.)
I'm such a fan of these 10 minute a day books. I'm using the Italian one now, anticipating a trip, and my husband, who has always wanted to learn French, is trying that one. I have a knack for languages, he doesn't - but he's really improving his French!
And may I just say that everyone we encountered in Germany was terrifically polite and friendly. Once, we were sitting in our car in a rainstorm reading a map, and a man came over and rapped on our window. Turned out he wanted to know if we were lost and needed help finding something!!
You will learn from this book, and enjoy it. August 17, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I found myself somewhat overwhelmed at my local bookstore by the number of books they had for learning German, so I decided to go with the easiest, most user friendly book they had, and picked up this one. I am very happy I did. I have really learned quite a bit from this book and have enjoyed doing it. This book has taught me enough, to know that I can in fact learn German, and has encouraged me to contiue onto more in depth books. Even though I agree, a CD would have made this so much better, the pronuciation guides are really excellent. The sticky labels are really a great way to not only learn a word, but remember it. If you're not sure you want to learn a language (or if you have to learn one and quickly) this is a really great book to start off with. Granted I spent more than 10 minutes a day on it, but only because I enjoyed learning from this book.
 Super way to learn July 7, 2007
After purchasing this book I took a college course - guess what, this book was the curriculum. Excellent book with lots of pictures and many engaging exercises.
Painless German Lessons June 3, 2007
I'm using this book to teach a group of senior citicens to speak and understand basic level German. The pictures are great and the exercises are very helpful. The book focuses on learning words and phrases in an organized manner and does not frighten learners with grammar and sentence structure. I think an audio CD would go well with this, just so the audience would have a way to practice at home, or while traveling. Don't let the title mislead you...it takes more than 10 minutes to learn...practicing 10 minutes several times a day will do the trick. With language it's all about repetition.
 Good exercise, but only as reinforcement August 31, 2006
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
The author seems to have her heart in the right place and the book is well organized, but I really doubt anyone will learn more than number, colors, or other such items.
I've been working through a number of German books in my middle(ish) aged quest to be bilingual so I'm not a total beginner. I wanted an exercise book to do over lunch and I found this book on sale (<$5). I would say I got about that amount of knowledge out of it.
The matching, fill in the blanks, and crossword puzzles were good, but so much is left out that you can't really understand any of what you are doing, you are just memorizing. For example, the author has you conjugate the verb 'sprechen' but never mentions it is an irregular verb that changes to 'du sprichst'. Later, the sentence structure where a second verb is unconjugated and moved to the end of the sentence is used by the author, but is never mentioned to the reader.
It was a good way to keep my head in German, but I can't say I got very much from the book.
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